Tears in the Bond of Reality
by Mersedes
Summary: COMPLETE. Confusion, angst, and frustration swallow our poor Kaoru as he deals with being away from home. One-shot.


**Tears in the bonds of reality**

An angsty one-shot in Kauro's point of view. He's got problems, oh yes he does.

Warning: may inadvertently **trigger** emotions some may want to keep under the lid.

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.-.-.

(One touch. One caress down my hip. Fingers trailing lower)

Flip.

Gritty salt in my teeth, coating the grooves of my molars.

My tongue aches from trying to remove them, and yet my fingers crawl

Snap.

I hope no one heard that.

Slip it in your mouth, hurry!

White Bright flashes of White

…_Hydroboration…_

Her hands move up and down like she's swimming

…_exists as a dimer B2H6, in equilibrium with its monomer BH3…_

That looks neat. I finally wrote it neatly. That's funny, I learned about monomers in general biology.

The whole world dissipates and it's rocking back and forth, tilting and sliding in spaces I'd never imagined existed.

Fluidly.

I press my wrist down on the metallic spiral bindings of my spiral notebook, curling my fingers against my palm, I press down. Hard.

The teacher can see me. I wonder if she knows what I'm doing.

need to stay awake need to pay attention need to listen need to feel _pain_ need to stay awake need to pay attention—

The taste of salt on my lips is fresh.

I can imagine myself swaying back and forth as the air particles dance and twirl around each other, in a sweet mockery of my seated, hunched figure.

Anticipation thrums in my blood—for what?

I meet her eyes, glowing behind thick lenses, and the world rights itself for just one moment—I am in class, I am studying, I am listening to her lecture, I am paying attention, like our parents told us, I am being a good little—

And when her eyes glide past me I fumble and I slip again where was I?

I look down at my notes, and my ink smears as my reddened wrist drags across it. I know there will be moon shaped marks

I wanted a strawberry milkshake to keep myself awake but the shake machine wasn't turned on and Hikaru had started drinking coffee

My handwriting is indecipherable to none other but my own eye,

_Indirect hydration: no carbocation, no rearrangementI am sleepy and I want to get out now and oxymercuration-demercuration-markovnikov product formed 1 degree need to tell Hikaru about yesterday_

,and yet I cannot make out why I had written that. I was supposed to be taking notes because our test was Friday and I hadn't even started reading the book yet. Normally, I wouldn't care, but there was pressure now--they wouldn't let me come back home for the summer...

…_Anti attacks… my nucleophile E…attacks from behind…H2O attacks from the other side…gets across the double bond…attacks from behind…_

I'm looking straight ahead and down at my papers and then my eyelids yearn to cover the distance separating them…

…_OH minus ion attacks from behind…_

all is at peace for a second and i can't hear a thing but my own drugged thoughts and i think im swimming now in the deepest of the deep because i can't see anything or feel anything except pressure coming at me and even that's ok because it doesn't hurt and it's so pleasant here because everything is slowed down like molasses and honey and just think of it dripping down a tree heavily the amber would stretch smoothly and lengthen languidly rolling

—lurch awake again, and hope no one noticed for the fiftieth time.

There is black pen in my hand, from Hikaru, because I don't like blue ink, and he knows it, and there is extra space on the page for me to write more notes with tingly fingers and suddenly I feel the urge to dive back into that peaceful hole that's long gone because there was only one other person I'd feel at peace with again.

Jarring reality snaps against me like an already too tight rubber-band and I feel it gnawing most gratingly at my cracked and dusty heart and shattered soul

_Please shut up shut up shut up I don't understand please shut up stop it already shut up_

Hurry, scribble something down, make sure your head doesn't hit the desk.

Her lips move faster now, an odd blur.

…_Addition of carbenes…_

She murmurs, the one to my left, and I turn to look at her.

Where did she come from?

The words collide in the air, clashing discordantly. I shake my head, trying to dispel the hollow echoes.

…_Formation of a halohydrin…Product is Markovnikov…1973…stereochemistry is—_

_--staggered—_

_--anti—_

Which one?

Too late. My hands move of their own accord, slipping past my lips, and my tongue sucks on the bitter.

Rubbing my eyes, hoping it would go away, that this was just a dream--

Papers are flipped in synchrony and pens bleed ink down the pages while lips are bruised by nervous teeth.

Bubbling against me were odd thoughts that lingered like spiderwebs caught on my fingers and they wouldn't go away but I didn't know exactly what they were.

(his laugh,his soft words,his _touch_)

It's ok, right?

I part my lips and form an imaginary word with my stinging lips and wait in expectation and the right answer so I can write it down and pretend that I had known it, too.

--but this was real and I was floating and drowning at the very same time.

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**Please comment. **


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